Early JN Learning

[N4LTA]

When I was about 9, I hooked up a 6 volt lantern battery in series with an old AM radio speaker and a carbon mike from a telephone handset. I could hold it close to my mouth and talk loud and I could hear myself reasonably loud in the speaker.

I announced to my uncle , who was about 18 and becoming annoyed with my invention, that I had invented a PA system.

He announced that I was, and I still remember it clearly, "a Moron and if I didn't shut up, he was going to drive me into the ground"

[AJ1G]

Ah yes, power interruptions. After the 'transmitter setting the bedroom curtains on fire' event, when my shack was condemned to the basement for the duration, I happily spent many hours building and taking apart things down there. But my mom was still suspicious. On November 9th, 1965, when the lights went out, the first thing she did was throw open the cellar door and say "What did you do?? The lights are out in the whole neighborhood!!"
"Ma, it's not *me*"
[/quote]

Exact same thing happened at our house...I was working on an audio power amplifier that had come out of a big old console radio  - had a pair of old school 6L6s in it.  All of  sudden the amp output went dead, and everything went completely black, except for two little blobs of rapidly dimming orange glow from the dying 6L6 filaments, followed by the same yell from the kitchen upstairs!

[Burt]

At age 14 I was reading, "How to Become a Radio Amateur", it showed a picture of excess voltage applied to a small lamp with the caption RIP. I could not understand how a bulb could rip.